Wandering Clerics and Mixed Rituals in the Early Christian North,<i>c.</i>1000–<i>c.</i>1150

Abstract

This article questions the traditional perception of early Christianisation in Scandinavia and Northern Rus' as processes separated by established confessional and institutional boundaries. Surviving narrative sources mention a number of clerical peregrinators crossing confessional borders in northern Europe in the post-conversion period, and some contemporaneous baptismal rites from Scandinavia and northern Rus' testify to their ability to influence the basic Christian rituals in both regions. These phenomena suggest that differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were in no way preventing contacts across the early Christian north in the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth century.